Terry Glavin: Nir Rosen plays the victim in self-serving non-apology

This is no longer just a Superbowl wardrobe malfunction. It’s not just some surreptitiously-taped Berlusconi bunga-bunga session. The execrable Nir Rosen has now turned his vulgar and self-incriminating Twitter outburst about the sexual assault suffered by CBS reporter Lara Logan in Cairo into a front-page, above-the-fold corpse-strewn train wreck of himself. Nir Rosen is Mel Gibson, Pee Wee Herman and Kanye West caught at a Michael Jackson boy-party. He’s a bald and baby-dropping Britney Spears found at a Boy George heroin binge. His self-aggrandizing auto-paparazzo in place of an apology at Salon may very well contain the most spectacular series of own-goals in a row I have ever read, anywhere. Remember: This is supposed to be his apology.

Nir the Résumé-Padding Braggart: “I am a staunch supporter of women’s rights, gay rights and the rights of the weak anywhere in the world.” Nir the Brazen Revisionist: “I have been challenged many times on my support of resistance movements. . .” Nir the Poor, Persecuted Victim: “I have been frustrated by the ideological opportunists who have used this ordeal for their personal gain.” Nir the Hysterical Slanderer: “People whose words have helped create and justify war and genocide. . .” Nir the Reality-Inverting Magician: “. . .use the disgusting situation of Logan’s assault as a lever against a longtime rival.” Nir the Excuse-Making Subject-Changer: “I’ve seen Arabs, Muslims and Egyptians called animals and pigs. . .”

He persists in assaulting Lara Logan’s professional integrity while in the same stroke he airbrushes his own services to the Taliban as a public-relations agent: “I felt she was a terrible journalist who supported wars that I had covered.” Caught red-handed, he doesn’t even blush: “I point it out now only to explain my thinking.”

The evidence he submits in his own defence: Exhibit A. At least you can’t accuse me of saying bad things about Julian Assange. Exhibit B. I’m probably not as stupid as Anne Coulter. Exhibit C: I was only joking, “and an entire mob turns on me.”

Objection: Actually, the mob turned on Lara Logan. You weren’t even there.

Oh, right. Nevermind. Anyway, D: Israel is Bad. That should score me some points, right? E: What about “our scorched-earth policies in Kandahar”?

Objection, m’lud. Do refer to the transcript from Mr. Rosen’s “warmonger” General Stanley McChrystal, particularly McChrystal’s COIN Guidance to ISAF: “Embrace the people. . . seek out the underprivileged, the disenfranchised, the disaffected. . . work with the children and students. . . shield the people from harm. . . improve daily.”

Objection sustained.

Okay, so sue me. Exhibit F. It’s Society’s Fault: “What do they expect to read?” G. It’s Twitter’s fault: “It’s a bizarre, voyeuristic Internet culture.” H. I wouldn’t even be in trouble “if I were not a leftist opponent of American wars.”

Here’s the real thing I did wrong: “I didn’t really damage the culture I was targeting.” I’m the one who deserves the sympathy, I mean, really, just look all the collateral damage I’ve caused to “my allies, my friends and the causes I struggle for”! Now even my fellow douchebags are avoiding me. Okay, there was another mistake I made: I should have known this would happen. “I only wish this had been apparent to me before I hit enter.”

Forgive me, you warmongers!

National Post

Journalist, author and blogger Terry Glavin is an adjunct professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia and editor of Transmontanus Books.

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